


We Are All Human

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 2x19, BAMF Jace Wayland, BAMF Magnus Bane, Background Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Child Abuse, Diplomacy, Downworlder Politics, Gen, Graphic Description, Graphic descriptions of Valentine's crimes, Graphic descriptions of violence, I love Catarina so she snuck in there at the end, Jace Wayland Deserves Nice Things, Jace Wayland Feels, Jace Wayland is a Herondale, M/M, POV Magnus Bane, Protective Alec Lightwood, Protective Jace Wayland, Protective Magnus Bane, Spoilers, Suicidal actions, War, Warlock Magnus Bane, Warning for Valentine Morgenstern, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 15:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11762388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Blood dripped from Jace’s hair in rivulets, ones that were rapidly turning into rivers before their very eyes. Every drop that hit the ground seemed to sound a chord inside the silence of the gathered crowds.Well, the brat always has been mesmerizing Magnus reflected ruefully. He looked around at the faces surrounding Jace, shadowhunters, warlocks, seelies, werewolves, vampires, even some mundanes. Magnus closed his mouth in a firm line, readied his magic just in case, and hoped Jace Herondale was mesmerizing enough to stop a war.





	We Are All Human

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This is mostly me working through feels from the last few episodes, and the format is kinda…odd, as it is mostly just Jace monologuing, but told from Magnus’ pov, with the Seelie Queen playing a surprisingly significant supporting role.

Alec will later tell Magnus that Jace worked the whole thing out from Valentine’s smirk, metres away across a torn up street. He will later say that Jace looked half-dead just before that, slouched against a crumpled car door. That the leap from collapsing to running took even Jace’s parabatai by surprise. 

But in that moment, long before his future fiancé tells him Jace’s party crashing was prompted by a desperate dash to stop the Seelie Queen from teaming up with Valentine after he’s sussed out this plan from a single smirk, Magnus hasn’t the foggiest idea what to make of the bloodied and shirtless form of Jace…Herondale? Crashing into the increasingly hostile crowd of downwolders vs shadowhunters gathered in the hall. 

He’s in the centre of them all almost before anyone notices him, Alexander slipping through to join Lydia and Isabel, standing resolute opposite the Queen and Magnus. 

For the first instant, it is all Magnus can do to stop himself from rushing to the shadowhunter’s side, because Jace looks like a demon’s regurgitated dinner. 

Then he took in the expression on the boy’s face, and that’s when things got really interesting. And slightly surreal. 

Jace stood tall, head perfectly erect, back straight. Somehow, despite the blood and the lack of decent clothing, he still managed to pull off majestic with that stance alone. 

“Your Highness, Queen of the Seelies, you speak for the Downworld. Alexander Lightwood, Head of the New York Institute, you speak for the Shadowhunters. In this moment, in this gathering, you are the voices of the people gathered here.” His voice rang around the hall, filling the very rafters with its resonance and grace. 

“With this in mind, I beg leave to put a request to you both.” Both individuals blink at Jace as if he’s lost his mind. Perhaps he has Magnus thought, somewhat uncharitably. What could he possibly be trying to accomplish with this? Besides killing himself?

The Queen recovers first. “State your request, Shadowhunter.” Alec merely inclined his head in acknowledgement. 

“I would address this gathering.” Alec expresses exasperation for the lot of them over Jace’s sudden fondness for brevity. “To what purpose?” 

Jace seemed unphased. “For the purpose of imparting information. Information about this war.” He hesitates for a moment here. “Information about our common enemy, Valentine Morgenstern.”

The Queen turns haughty. If this wasn’t her default setting, Magnus would almost suspect she was hiding something. Was afraid of something. “And who are you to claim this special knowledge of our “common” enemy?”

Jace raised his chin, his words coming out even clearer. “I’m the child he cut from Celine Herondale’s womb, and raised as his own son. I was raised to be Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.”  
Magnus felt a wave of nausea rip through him, stunning in its intensity. When stated baldly like that, horrific didn’t quite cover it, now did it. 

The statement has the desired shock value. The Queen’s expression didn’t change, but Alec spoke before she could. “With the Queen’s permission, I move to grant this request.” This time, it was the Queen’s turn to merely nod. 

A hushed silence fell over the crowd then, as Jace padded into the circle quickly formed between the Queen and Alexander. 

Blood dripped from Jace’s hair in rivulets, ones that were rapidly turning into rivers before their very eyes. Every drop that hit the ground seemed to sound a chord inside the silence of the gathered crowd. 

Well, the brat always has been mesmerizing Magnus reflected ruefully. He looked around at the faces surrounding Jace, shadowhunters, warlock, seelie, werewolf, even some mundanes. Magnus closed his mouth in a firm line, readied his magic just in case, and hoped Jace Herondale was mesmerizing enough to stop a war. 

Jace clenched his jaw, shifting his eyes from face to face. “Someone somewhere, centuries ago decided that Angel blood meant you were good, and Demon blood meant you were bad, and that it really was just that simple.” He took a deep breath, his lungs rattling hard enough to be heard at the farthest edges of the crowd. 

“I was raised by one of the psychopaths that kind of blood purity, that kind of thinking, bred.” He kept his eyes carefully fixed on the ground here. “And I watched him kill so many beings. He seemed to delight in it. The more blood and gore he spread around the better.” In another life, Jace’s expression might have passed as a rather twisted version of a smile. He finally glanced up. “But the one thing all those victims had? The one thing? It didn’t matter who they were. Warlock, werewolf, mundane, vampire, shadowhunter, seelie. It didn’t matter to him. He killed them all anyway, regardless. He kept them until they were done being useful, and then he killed them.” Jace really did laugh here, although whether at the queasy looks on the faces surrounding him or his own thoughts, it was hard to tell. 

“I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what was so special about me, that he abandoned me instead of killing me when I stopped being useful.” Jace flicked his eyes up to meet Magnus’ for the first time since all this started. The depth of anguish in those eyes nearly stole the warlock’s breath right out of his lungs. 

“I mean, what the hell does it say about me that I’m one of the only things in this fucked up world that Valentine Morgenstern seems to actually, genuinely love?” Valentine’s name sends a ripple through parts of the crowd, noticeably the downworlder parts. Confusion flicked across Clary and Izzy’s faces, even as Jace took in the reaction and somehow straightened up slightly. 

Magnus suspects the move was supposed to look belligerent, but between the blood and the torn clothing, it mostly just looked painful. “Oh yeah, I guess shadowhunter gossip isn’t all the rage in the Downworld these days. I’m Valentine Morgenstern’s son. I’m the one who activated the Soul Sword in the New York Institute.” The bravado in that, the desire to get a reaction was so painfully clear it took Magnus a moment too long to respond. 

It was hard to tell who threw the star, although Alec’s bow was out and pointed at Meliorn a moment after it struck Jace’s shoulder. The boy didn’t even so much as stagger, looking down at the metal biting into his flesh as if it was an interesting form of insect, trivial and utterly insignificant. 

Magnus rippled his magic around the circle Jace was standing in, trying to prevent things from escalating further, cursing silently. Why did Jonathan always have to be so damn suicidal?

Jace turned in a slow circle inside the glowing blue lines, his eyes somehow clearer than they had been this entire time. “I could apologize for that, but I know it will never be enough,” his voice cracked with sincerity, “I could try to justify it, explain why I ever touched the Sword in the first place. I could blame it all on Valentine.” Alec looked like he had swallowed a porcupine, as if he alone had figured out where Jace was going with all this. 

“But I won’t, because regardless of the whys and wherefores, I touched it, and people died. Your people all died.” He sweeps the room again with this statement, but somehow, his eyes never quite seem to leave Magnus’.

Blood ran down Jace’s hands, smearing on his cheeks as he dashed away a tear. Magnus felt his throat tighten. The boy looked so very, terribly young standing there, offering himself up for judgement. 

“All the apologies in the world are never going to bring any of them back, but I am, so very, very sorry.” The tears are thicker now, so thick they must be blurring Jace’s vision into a haze of colour. 

“I am one of two children raised by Valentine Morgenstern as his sons, his word for glorified experiments. And thanks to our father and his thirst for power and raising efficient killing machines, I’m the only one left alive.” Jace has eyes for Clary alone here, the apology written in the air between them. 

“I was created to be a weapon, to aid Valentine in his favourite pastime. Killing.” Jace actually laughed here, spraying blood far enough to sizzle against Magnus’ magic lines. “So you see, I hadn’t yet outlived my usefulness all those years ago. I could still be of use to him, I was just too weak to be included in the planning process.” Jace sounded like he was descending into a pity party, and while he had more than earned it, Magnus could feel the crowd growing impatient. 

“Get to the point Jonathan,” he muttered, barely audible. 

Jace snapped his eyes up to Magnus’ anyway, rolled his shoulders in a move that must have shifted the throwing star closer to his heart. Magnus closed his eyes and considered praying. 

Jace cleared his throat, and somehow, this was the most vulnerable any of them had seen him look. Ever. It was like he was preparing to bare his soul, and let it be impaled in the process. 

“I five when I killed my first mundane, six when I killed my first seelie.” Magnus felt his jaw begin to drop in horror. “Seven for wolf, eight for vampire, nine for shadowhunter.” A ripple went through the crowd at that, but Jace appeared long past noticing. 

“We never did get to warlock. Valentine had seen saving it for last, the most special he called it. I think he was planning to make it my tenth birthday present.” Jace stared at something none of them could say. No one would have interrupted by this point, but Magnus’ magic flared higher than ever. “Guess I wasn’t worthy even of that in his eyes.” It was a terrible thing to hear, that rasped whisper. The last realization of a little boy who had only ever wanted his father to love him. 

Jace raised a hand to his chest and actually pressed on the throwing star. As if the pain was the only thing giving him the strength to keep going. He shook his hair from his face, and raised his head to the crowd. 

“I was raised by a psychopath to hate everyone, Downwolder and Shadowhunter alike. If you weren’t a Morgenstern, you weren’t pure blooded enough to have the right to breath. That was the lesson he imparted to me, every day, for years.” Jace swiveled his head around the group, meeting as many eyes as he could. 

“It’s a lesson I learned very well.” Someone finally broke out of the horror induced trance hanging over all their heads. Raphael, Magnus realized, his vampire son looking green around the edges but no less determined than when this began. “So what changed then?” 

And apparently someone had realized Jace was building up to something. Could have fooled Magnus. His best guess so far had been that the blond br-boy was trying to mesmerize them all with words until the horror of it all made them forget why they were fighting in the first place. 

Jace looked infinitely grateful for a moment, his eyes wide and oddly golden. “Well, meeting other people besides Valentine certainly helped.” Impossibly, that actually earned a disbelieving chuckle from a few of them. “But mostly,” Jace hesitated, “mostly people changed my mind. Showed me a different way. Of thinking, of being. Of living.” Jace twirled in place, his gaze shifting form one Lightwood to another, from Magnus to Raphael to Maia’s tear streaked face, to Simon’s clenched jaw. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I held on to those beliefs, for years. The belief that we were better because of our blood. The belief that we were somehow special, somehow innately good. But then, then, I began to meet some people. I began to see things Valentine never talked about.” Jace’s voice broke again, his eyes firmly on his parabatai. “I saw shadowhunters could be cruel, even to their own kin.” His eyes shifted to Izzy, “I saw they could be kind, even to those who were different.” Here he flicked a brow over to Meliorn. 

“I saw vampires could be dorky,” Simon blushed, “And really kinda endearing.” Jace grinned fleetingly, then moved on again. “I saw the line between shadowhunter and downworlder could be as thin as the flash of a knife, and that neither was any less honourable than the other.” Luke inclined his head, eyes shining with something thick and wet at the sight of the boy his former parabatai raised, terrorized really, standing up for what he felt was right. Finally. 

Jace really did grin at Meliorn now. “I saw seelies could be as devious as they are honest, but also has honourable as they are beautiful. Not to mention really frikking hot.” A laugh startled out of Magnus, and suddenly those eyes were back on him. 

“And warlocks?” Magnus held his breath, and the crowd seemed to hold theirs with him. “I saw warlocks could be compassionate as well as fiery, I saw they could be kind,” Jace’s voice dropped to a whisper, “Even to someone like me. Even to Valentine Morgenstern’s son.” Magnus felt his throat tighten at the softness in that gaze, the incredulity, the gratitude. 

The boy’s eyes lingered on his a moment longer, than moved to Alec’s. “I saw they could love, more deeply and fiercely than anything I’ve ever seen.” Jace was beginning to shake, the shock and blood loss finally catching up to him. But he continued on anyway. The mood in the crowd may not have appeared to shift, but Magnus would be willing to bet a large portion of those looks were now more gruding admiration than shocked horror. Endurance was a quality they all valued, regardless of blood or creed. 

“I saw we were all capable of great courage, and great weakness. Yes, I saw shadowhunters could be cruel, and cowardly. Although admittedly that one wasn’t too much of a surprise in hindsight,” Jace offered an ironic look to the crowd, reminding everyone, as if they needed reminding, that he was raised by the very embodiment of shadowhunter cruelty. “But the biggest thing I noticed, the most surprising thing, as simple as it seems now, standing here? Was that my father was wrong. Valentine was wrong.” 

Jace manages to make this look like a great epiphany, the sincerity of his gaze searing into Magnus’ soul. Alec’s parabatai has never looked more like a Herondale than he does in this moment, standing there, bleeding for them all. 

“He was wrong, because all those things I saw, all those things I learned? We’re all capable of them. Because at the end of the day, what are we all?” Magnus takes comfort in the fact it appears to take all of them the same length of time to catch on as it does him. “We’re all at least half human. We all have angel or demon blood, yes. But we all have mundane blood too.” Jace grinned here, and for the first time since the boy limped into their midst, throwing his seraph blade away as if it burned him, screaming at them all to listen, it looks genuine. 

“The one thing my father deemed unworthy of even teaching me to kill, turned out to be the one thing that binds us all together. That in the end, we are all simply, irrevocably human.” Jace looked like he hoped Valentine was choking on the irony, wherever he had slinked off to. 

He turned back to Raphael, his expression determined and fierce. “So you ask what changed? You. All of you.” Jace looks at the people standing closest to him, shadowhunter and downworlder alike. At his family. “You all changed me. You all showed me what it means to be alive. What it means to be human. To be a person.”

Silence rang through the hall, gathering around Jace like a spotlight. Nobody so much as shifted awkwardly, Jace’s face pinched but earnest, the blood at his feet beginning to form a pool. It was only then that Magnus finally noticed the boy didn’t even have any shoes on. 

Jace followed Magnus’ eyes down to his bare feet and back, flashing a grin that for a moment, almost appeared cheeky. Magnus tilted his head slightly. Had Alec’s parabatai really just winked at him? Now, of all times?

Before he could reflect on that fully, a high, childlike voice cut through the air. “A most moving display Master Morgenstern, to be sure. But may one ask what you hoped to accomplish by it?”

Jace shifted until he was facing the Seelie Queen once more, his face carefully neutral. “I hoped to show the true insanity of Valentine Morgenstern Your Majesty, to expose his treachery once and for all. I hoped to foster a sense of honesty between all of our peoples.” And just like that, the person who yesterday Magnus would have described as the least likely to be diplomatic individual he knew, broke the fifty-fifty division of us vs. them that had gone from splitting their world in two, to defining how they saw that world at all. 

Jace wasn’t done though. “I hoped to show the true heart of Valentine Morgenstern Your Highness. I hoped to emphasize the folly of those who would side with him, who would consider his hatred to have limits or boundaries, or be anything less than completely undiscriminatory.” Magnus isn’t sure if that last bit is even an actual word, but something in that to the point speech evidently affected the Queen deeply, because she actually lets a small amount of displeasure to colour her usually whimsical if cruel tone.

“What do you desire, Jonathan Morgenstern?” Jace actually listed more than he bowed there, but the question was acknowledged in something approaching an appropriate manner. 

“Thank you for the consideration Your Majesty. I desire to know if we will go to war today.”

He has eyes only for the Queen, and in any other situation, with any less knowledge of both individuals in his head, Magnus would find it laughable to the point of being hilarious, to apparently young and beautiful people deciding the fate of the entire world, all on their own. 

The Queen’s gaze seems to hover over the throwing star in Jace’s shoulder for a very long time, before she raises her head, and her voice. “No.” Magnus feels his own mouth drop along with everyone else’s. “Our answer to your request is no. There shall not be a war today. Although we make no such assurances for the future.” The Queen begins to lead the seelies out of the crowd, her voice carrying back towards Jace as she brushed by him. “Times have to change Master Herondale.” 

Jace’s perfectly executed bow does nothing to muffle his rebuttal. “I couldn’t agree more Your Highness…and thank you.” And then, to everyone’s further astonishment, the shadowhunter actually exchanged nods with the Queen of the Seelies. 

The tension is still saping from the air, the crowd still more or less frozen in place with shock when Jace finally gives in to the pull of gravity. 

Magnus isn’t sure what the hell just happened, although he most definitely plans to find out, but in the face of the bleeding shadowhunter lying like a corpse at his feet, he doesn’t even hesitate before rushing to the boy’s aid. 

Magnus finds himself facing Alexander across Jace’s crumpled form, his magic thankfully having spared the boy a nasty concussion. Said magic fortunately prevents them from being crushed by several hundred rather concerned downworlders and some rather concerned shadowhunters, but it gets rather crowded rather rapidly around Jace. 

Magnus only manages to hold Alec’s gaze for about a second, but he backs it up with a soothing, “He’ll be find Alexander,” so progress. 

And also problem, because centuries of experience in healing magic or not, Magnus isn’t entirely sure how Jace is still breathing, let alone where to start to ensure they keep him that way. 

Firm hands land beside his own over the honest to goodness hole bubbling blood up from the boy’s lung. “Catarina darling, you’ve never looked more beautiful.” 

Catarina snorts, her fingers checking for an exit wound on Jace’s back. “Yeah, sweat talking later Bane. For now, what do you say we work on preventing this idiot from bleeding to death?” 

Magnus manages a weak grin at that, which abruptly dies when Jace starts to moan under the pressure they are applying to his various wounds. 

Distantly, he hears Alexander comforting the girls, keeping them at a distance to allow the warlocks to work on saving their resident suicide risk. 

Catarina sighs in exasperation as blood starts pouring from yet another previously hidden wound. Her gaze flicks up briefly to where Magnus has just ripped a groan from Jace by slowly moving the vile throwing star closer to the surface of his skin. 

Her eyes hold for a moment too long, before returning to her own task. “I have a feeling Tessa’s going to love this one.”

In retrospect, Magnus should have noticed what everyone was so focused on about Jace’s exposed shoulder, should have realized it wasn’t that damn throwing star, long before Tessa Grey’s name was even mentioned. 

He shifts his gaze from the blood for a moment, and there, sure enough, high on Jace’s right collar bone, is the faint outline of the Herondale Star. 

This should not be a revelation, not even remotely. But in Magnus’ defense, he has been rather busy with other things lately. Such as preparing for a potential war. Which Jace just averted, with nothing but a punctured lung and a lot of not so very pretty words. 

Magnus finds it very hard to prevent himself grinning like a complete loon. 

“Yes,” he rasps it out, his less occupied hand coming up to smooth the sweaty tangle of hair back from Jace’s forehead, “I have a feeling Tessa’s going to adore him.”

And then Magnus really does laugh, loudly and freely enough that Jace cracks a dual coloured eye open and begs him to be quiet. Magnus only laughs harder, his hands continuing their skillful healing all the while. But he keeps smiling. 

Because averting a war by literally placing oneself centre stage, bleeding and broken, and offering up the depths of one’s soul as a peace offering? It’s such a Herondale thing to do.


End file.
